Teaching Individuals to Use
Assistive Technology
Edward Rosenthal
Next Generation Technologies Inc.
Country:
Day Phone: 425—744—1100
PRESENTER
#2
Sue Martin
Veterans Administration
Birmingham VAMC
Birmingham
Alabama
35L33
country: USA
Day Phone: (205) 933—8ZOl extension 6994
Email: sue.martin@med.va.gov
This session will focus on bringing state—of—the—art technologies to people
with disabilities (mobility, blindness, low vision) and discuss/focus on
training issues.
Complete Paper: Both presenters have extensive experience in evaluating
individuals with disabilities for use of assistive technology, deploying
assistive technology, training users, and providing technical support to these
users. The purpose of this section is to discuss some of the latest
technologies being implemented and review some “hard lessons learned”.
The primary focus of the technology portion will be on technologies for people
with blindness/low vision and mobility impairment as both Mr. Rosenthal in Ms.
Martin have worked with speech input/voice output integration technologies. In
her role as Assistive Technology specialist with the Birmingham Veterans
Administration Medical Center Ms. Martin has had the opportunity to work with
individuals that were new to computing and presented multiple disabilities. Mr.
Rosenthal, as president and CEO of Next Generation Technologies, maintains a
primary practice and assistive technology and has extensive experience
providing a broad range of assistive technology both in organizational
structures and for individuals.
This one-hour session will provide information on ideas for evaluation
individuals with disabilities, how to prepare appropriately for technology
implementation, issues
associated with skills transference/training, and how do anticipate ongoing
technical issues associated with various assistive technologies (PC—based).
Two
of the primary objectives of this presentation are to discuss assistive
technology issues that may indicate or contraindicate use of this technology
for particular individuals, and to discuss unique aspects of JSay technology
that provide its core consistency and interactive support for users. Taken
together these objectives should elp both prospect of
end—users and assistive technology professionals better understand he design approach of JSay technology and even the
decision-making process about using JSay as an appropriate accommodation.
Intended for beginning through advanced PC users and assistive technology
professionals people attending should come away from the presentation with a
broad-based sense of the differences between JSay Standard and JSay
Professional, understand how this unique approach to speech input/voice output
has advanced the state—of—the-art in this middleware approach, and have a
better sense of how this technology will help users accomplish their overall PC
objectives without using the keyboard/mouse or being able to view the video
display. All session attendees will receive support materials (accessible
format will be made available).